Downtown Rockford parking fees: No more breaks on decks

ROCKFORD — The grace period is over: You’ll have to pay to park at the city’s downtown decks on nights and weekends, too.

Greg Stanley

ROCKFORD — The grace period is over: You’ll have to pay to park at the city’s downtown decks on nights and weekends, too.

It’s been a month since Rockford’s parking manger, ABM Parking, installed hourly ticket machines at the parking decks across from the BMO Harris Bank Center and at Wyman and Elm streets. The company will install machines at the other two downtown decks — at State and Main streets and the Pioneer deck immediately east of the Coronado — by the end of summer.

The machines open the decks up to daily and hourly parking, as part of a step toward making the city’s parking operations self-sustaining.

The parking system has been losing money, between $160,000 and $880,000, in each of the past 11 years. In February, the City Council hired ABM to manage permits, enforce tickets and increase revenue.

“The system needs to pay for itself,” said Jeremy Carter, traffic engineer. “We can’t eliminate expenses, so we have to look at increasing revenues.”

Parking expenses have hovered at around $2 million a year since 2002. During that time, parking revenue, which mostly comes from monthly permits, has remained virtually flat at $1.6 million, according to city records.

The deck meters are the city’s first attempt at capturing any significant revenue from hourly parking.

That money will go toward repairing the aging decks and eventually building a new one, Carter said.

Several downtown business owners haven’t noticed a change in the 30 days since the deck meters have been operational during the day.

“We have a lot of downtown customers and jury members, so we really haven’t seen a difference,” Patel said.

Patel would be more concerned if the city began to charge for parking in public lots or on the streets, he said.

There are no plans yet to charge for parking at surface lots.

But that could be the next debate, said Ald. Tom McNamara, D-3.

“Eventually, folks are going to want us to charge in surface lots,” McNamara said. “But we’re not ready for it. We’re building momentum for downtown with new businesses. But if we start to chase after this, we may bite off our nose to save our face.”